Garden Boules

Garden Boules

Select your Delivery Area HERE

Price:£44.99

One of France's most popular pastimes and favourite games, playing Boules (also known as Pétanque) or garden boules has very quickly become also one of the UK's favourite family garden games. This simple game of skill, which is easy to follow and play, is something that family and friends of all ages can enjoy and have many hours of fun.

Complete with 8 polished alloy Boules, a wooden jack and a measure, this fantastic game comes complete in a heavy duty metal carrying case at a real fantastic price.

Enjoy those long summer days and evenings playing with all the family and friends playing some great outdoors games. From the younger member of the family to the older family member, everyone can have fun playing this all time favourite Boules with this garden boules game set.

Garden Boules Includes:

Garden Boules Dimms:

Our garden boules is just part of our large range of Garden Games and Giant Garden Games that will give many hours of fun for all the family, so why not take a look and see what else you might like playing.

The Rules of Playing Boules:

The History of Boules:

The game of boules, otherwise known as pétanque , is perhaps the sport that is closest to French hearts. Similar to British lawn bowling or Italian bocce , the French version is traditionally played with metallic balls on a dirt surface beneath trees, with a glass of pastis at hand. The local boulodrome is a social focal point in southern France.

The object of the game is to throw your balls - usually with somewhat of an arched back-spin - so that they land closer to the small object ball (cochonnet ) than those of your opponent, or strike and drive the object ball toward your other balls and away from your opponent's.

The Ancient Greeks are recorded to have played a game of tossing coins, then flat stones, and later stone balls, called spheristics, trying to have them go as far as possible, as early as the 6th century B.C. The Ancient Romans modified the game by adding a target that had to be approached as closely as possible. This Roman variation was brought to Provence by Roman soldiers and sailors. A Roman sepulchre in Florence shows people playing this game, stooping down to measure the points.

Pétanque is a form of boules where the goal is, while standing with the feet together in a small circle, to throw hollow metal balls as close as possible to a small ball called a cochonnet (jack). The game is normally played on hard dirt or gravel, but can also be played on grass or other surfaces. Soft sandy beaches are not suitable.

After the Romans, the stone balls were replaced by wooden balls, with nails to give them greater weight. In the Middle Ages Erasmus referred to the game as globurum, but it became commonly known as 'boules,' or balls, and it was played throughout Europe. King Henry III of England banned the playing of the game by his archers, and in the 14th Century, King Charles IV of France and Charles V of France also forbade the sport to commoners. Only in the 17th century was the ban lifted.

By the 19th century, in England the sport had become "bowls" or "lawn bowling"; in France, it was known as boules, and was played throughout the country. The French artist Meissonnier made two paintings showing people playing the game, and Honoré de Balzac described a match in La Comédie Humaine. In the South of France it had evolved into jeu provençal, similar to today's pétanque, except that the field was larger and players ran three steps before throwing the ball. The game was played in villages all over Provence, usually on squares of land in the shade of plane trees. Matches of jeu provençale at the turn of the century are memorably described in the memoirs of novelist Marcel Pagnol.

Pétanque in its present form was invented in 1907 in the town of La Ciotat near Marseilles in southern France by a French boule lyonnaise player named Jules Lenoir, whom rheumatism prevented from running before he threw the ball. The length of the pitch or field was reduced by roughly half, and the moving delivery was replaced with a stationary one.

The English and French name pétanque comes from la petanca in the Provençal dialect of the Occitan language, deriving from the expression pès tancats, meaning "feet together" or more exactly "feet anchored".

The first pétanque tournament with the new rules was organized in 1910 by the brothers Ernest & Joseph Pitiot, proprietors of a café at La Ciotat. After that the sport grew with great speed, and soon became the most popular form of boules. The international Pétanque federation Fédération Internationale de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal was founded in 1958 in Marseille and has about 600,000 members in 52 countries (2002).

The first World Championships were organized in 1959.

The casual form of the game of Pétanque is played by about 17 million people in France, mostly during their summer vacations. There are about 375,000 players licensed with the Fédération Française de Pétanque et Jeu Provençal (FFPJP) and some 3000 in England.

Delivery Postcodes and Additional Surcharges:

Standard Delivery of this product which is included in our price is to Mainland England, Wales and most of Scotland (see below) and is on a 3 - 5 working day service. Additional carriage charges apply to delivery areas outside of these areas and can be found below along with the expected delivery service. Delivery to these other areas is normally between 3 - 5 working days but please allow up to 5 working days.